Adjunct Professor
Turned Union Organizer
What
I Taught
Visual Culture, American Studies, Photoshop, Video Production, Media Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, Queer Studies, Cultural Studies, Volunteer/Service Learning, Continuing Education Writing, Gender and Sexuality 101 Workshops
Where
I Taught
University of California Irvine, California State University Fullerton, Pitzer College, Scripps College, Claremont Graduate University, Santa Fe Community College, Vermont College of Fine Arts
Titles
I Had
Teaching Assistant, Lecturer, Visiting Assistant Professor, Visiting Assistant Adjunct Professor, Adjunct Professor
Service to
Colleges
Queer Resource Center Advisor, Senior Project Advisor, Thesis Advisor, Dissertation Advisor, LGBTQ Pride Club Advisor, Volunteer Service Curriculum Committee, President's Diversity Advisory Committee, Committee Chair: Gender Neutral Bathroom working group, Adjunct Representative to Faculty Senate
"Service" is generally unpaid work
Per
Course Pay & Annual Salaries
$1950, $2350, $3400, $7500, $8000, $8500
$16,000, $27,500, $28,000, $48,900
Other Jobs While A Professor
Gay Porn Video Editor (under the alias Aileen D'Oeuvre), Home Health Care Aide, Caterer, Freelance Videographer, 1099 Contractor at Educational Non-Profit, Independent Artist Mentor, Unemployment Collector
Union Organizer
SEIU 1021
Part of a stellar organizing team that won five union elections in less than a year, and two more the following year, creating seven new union chapters for Bay Area adjunct faculty.
One school included tenure faculty following the lead of adjunct faculty in the organizing, challenging the 1980 Yeshiva ruling that all tenured faculty are management.
Another school's staff chose to unionize after the contingent faculty won their first union contract
Moved to being Field Representative for San Francisco Department of Public Health and San Francisco General Hospital, the hospital hat developed an integrative care model for HIV/AIDS patients that became the standard of care. Sadly, many of the LGTBQ folks who were at the vanguard of HIV care became administrators upholding inequitable policies health care and facilities workers fought against.
California Faculty Association
Field Representative for the union that set the bar for contingent faculty union contacts. Lecturers at the California State Universities have more of a career pathway than most adjuncts, they can move into 1 year and 3 year contracts as part of their collective bargaining agreement. This 40 year old union is the conscience of the California State University system, fighting for equity and access as the student body became predominantly first generation and of color while funding from the state stagnated.
degrees earned
MFA, Studio Art, UC Irvine
MA, Cultural Studies, Claremont Graduate University
BA, Visual Art, Antioch College
student debt owed
$90,000
irs debt owed
$6,000
bankruptcy charge off
$35,000
An interview about my professional and economic realities as an Adjunct Professor. (click on link above)
Inside Higher Ed, March 2014
A 2014 essay about my move from teaching to organizing.
Hint: it wasn't easy.
Originally published on Fugitive Faculty blogsite, to be published in the forthcoming anthology, "Teaching Poor."
click on image
to read essay
Labor Pains
Educate
then Agitate
A recent essay about finding myself standing in the midst of a new labor movement
click on image
to read essay
Published in issue 18 of make/shift: feminisims in motion.
Another recent essay
tracing the use of art as an organizing tool in the
Adjunct Union movement.
(click on link above)
Published on the New Faculty Majority Blog, "Majority Rule."
An blog post on Cultural Capital Doesn't Pay the Rent written after I'd been working in the Labor Movement for a few years and the White Nationalist Movement held their violent rally in Charlottesville.
(click on link above)
precarity to stability
I was hired to work for SEIU International for $36,600 when I moved from New Mexico to California. The guaranteed salary, health care, and sick days felt like riches. Four months later I was hired by local 1021 directly at a starting salary of $52,000.
I was on a career path with raises and benefits.
In Oakland rent was $1700/month.
The positions had a year-long probation, I was on probation from March 2014 through May 2015, because of the job change between the International and the Local.
After four years, as a unionized worker, my salary was $70,000. We moved to a new place that cost $2100.
precarity to stability
At CFA, as a unionized worker, in two years, my salary went from $71,000 to $92,000. We moved again for the job, to Sacramento, CA where we bought a house for $240,000 despite my partner being on workers' comp for 2 years and my bankruptcy still on my credit report. Or Mortgage is $1500/month, $600 less than rent in Oakland.
Probationary period is two years.
student debt owed
$89,000
irs debt owed
$0 as of July 2019!
years of precaritous employment between 2005-2020
12